My affair with Katherine Anne Porter has been going on for some time now, and I revisit her stories more than any other author.

This collection is likeMy affair with Katherine Anne Porter has been going on for some time now, and I revisit her stories more than any other author.

This collection is like a weird mixtape where someone chooses to focus on a certain tone of a particular artist. All of the stories are excellent, but they don't present you with all Porter can achieve and only a handful of them are her at her absolute best. Because of this, it's not a good introduction for her, I feel.

The best introduction is 'Pale Horse, Pale Rider', a perfect book of American fiction. One story in 'The Old Order' is from 'Pale Horse, Pale Rider' and that is 'Old Mortality', a Miranda story where she is "not a girl, not yet a woman", to quote the scintillating Britney Spears pop classic.

BUT I really would have loved to read Porter addressing her roots more directly. You see, the 'Miranda stories' so-called, are kind of like the Nick Adams stories of Hemingway: Partially autobiographical, deeply romantic and wistful, while simultaneously self-mythologizing. For Porter, she sort of suggests a history as a Southern belle from a prestigious old southern family (she also suggested this in person when telling anecdotes to enraptured listeners) that's weirdly grafted on to a Texas setting (in the early stories). If you know her biography, she was a poor child who grew up in Central Texas, but she was always a little hesitant to embrace this, and had reservations about her home state (I feel you, Katherine). Reading a story where she inhabited her past more directly would be a great joy to me. You get a glimpse of what might have been in 'The Grave', the best story in this collection. It's a story about a brother and sister exploring a graveyard, a story about punishment and memory and fleeting joy. The ending, where she is far away in another country and remembering that day and sees her brother's face again, well, just read it:

One day she was picking her path among the puddles and crushed refuse of a market street in a strange city of a strange country, when, without warning, in totality, plain and clear in its true colors as if she looked through a frame upon a scene that had not stirred nor changed since the moment it happened, the episode of the far-off day leaped from its burial place before her mind’s eye. She was so reasonlessly horrified she halted suddenly staring, the scene before her eyes dimmed by the vision back of them. An Indian vendor had held up before her a tray of dyed-sugar sweets, shaped like all kinds of small creatures: birds, baby chicks, baby rabbits, lambs, baby pigs. They were in gay colors and smelled of vanilla, maybe. . . . It was a very hot day and the smell in the market, with its piles of raw flesh and wilting flowers, was like the mingled sweetness and corruption she had smelled that other day in the empty cemetery at home: the day she had remembered vaguely always until now as the time she and her brother had found treasure in the opened graves. Instantly upon this thought the dreadful vision faded, and she saw clearly her brother, whose childhood face she had forgotten, standing again in the blazing sunshine, again twelve years old, a pleased sober smile in his eyes, turning the silver dove over and over in his hands.

Takes your breath away doesn't it?

Sadly, one of the finest Miranda stories is missing from this, 'Holiday', set on a farm of German immigrants in Central Texas. Maybe it wasn't available when this was published?...more

My father gave me this book. He must have seen her at some cop event or something. The title and cover design are unfortunate, but the content is genuMy father gave me this book. He must have seen her at some cop event or something. The title and cover design are unfortunate, but the content is genuine and colorful. Free-verse poetry detailing memorable encounters in Houston's violent and sad corridors....more

I'm all for anything that presents me with inRead as a drama or a thriller, this script is abysmal and boring.

Read as a comedy, it is riotously funny.

I'm all for anything that presents me with interesting new Javier Bardem hairstyles, but the conversations between the men in this script about women recall the discussions of Mark and Johnny in 'The Room'.

In fact, the love scenes here have the same alien remove that characterized the long love scenes in 'The Room'. What I'm saying is that this is basically Cormac McCarthy's version of 'The Room'. The tagline could even be: 'Everyone betray me! I'm fed up with this wurld!'

McCarthy clearly admires the creative violence and tenacity of the cartels, but he doesn't really have much to say about it, aside from his detailed descriptions of their execution methods, in this way he is kind of similar to certain horror directors, the type of horror directors who prize innovative 'kills' above all else in their films. As far as cartels and the modern situation at the border, I highly recommend the work of Charles Bowden, whose work on this topic is much more enlightening and authentic.

I've heard the old joke about "Why wasn't Jesus born in ____?" applied to every place I've ever been. I groaned when I saw it here.

Why do the characters use the word 'knickers' about a dozen times? These people live in El Paso for goodness sake.

And just for the record, El Paso is one of the safest, friendliest places in the United States. One of my favorite cities in Texas. If you're ever there stop by H&H Car Wash for chile rellenos and go bouldering at Hueco Tanks.

There is just sadly very little content here. The same facts are presented again and again, and the details of Porter's adolescence in Texas become evThere is just sadly very little content here. The same facts are presented again and again, and the details of Porter's adolescence in Texas become even more elusive and vague with a perusal of these essays, which is probably how she would've wanted it. And the recollections of her as an adult make her sound like Auntie Mame or something.

This book reminds us of how many female authors who were born in Texas had to leave it to write about it well.

She presented herself as a Southern Belle from New Orleans, but she was actually a poor girl from Texas.

A lot of used bookstores in Texas have shelves filled mostly with romance novels and Louis Lamour paperbacks. It gives you an idea of what most people there expect from fiction.

In the vein of S.J. Perelman, Ian Frazier, another humorous 'New Yorker' columnist, this book gathering Texas-related columns. Brisket, true-crime, anIn the vein of S.J. Perelman, Ian Frazier, another humorous 'New Yorker' columnist, this book gathering Texas-related columns. Brisket, true-crime, antiquarians, Texas politics, Joe Bob Briggs, even a bizarre story about my hometown of Waco that I'd never read about. I certainly must track down more columns by this author....more

SMITH, CLINTON LAFAYETTE AND JEFFERSON DAVIS. Clint and Jeff Smith were captured on February 26, 1From the Texas State Historical Association website.

SMITH, CLINTON LAFAYETTE AND JEFFERSON DAVIS. Clint and Jeff Smith were captured on February 26, 1871, by Lipans and Comanches while herding sheep near the Smith home on Cibolo Creek between San Antonio and Boerne. They were the sons of Henry Smith, a Texas lawman and rancher from Pennsylvania, and Frances Short, a native of Alabama and a member of the controversial Short clan of Fayette County, Texas. When an initial rescue effort led by the brothers' two sisters Amanda (Lane) and Caroline (Coker) failed, Capt. Henry Smith and Capt. John W. Sansom, a cousin, assembled a large body of Texas Rangersqv and local militia, who, along with a posse led by Capt. Charles Schreiner, pursued the Indians from near Kendalia to Fort Concho in West Texas. The rescue attempt was futile, however, and for the next five years, until Clint and Jeff were returned to their families, Henry Smith offered a reward of $1,000 for each of the boys. The panoramic tale of their captivity, laced with predictable adventures, a few inconsistencies, and the names of many prominent chiefs, including Geronimo, was compiled by J. Marvin Hunter. The brothers were interviewed in their sixties after they, along with Herman Lehmann, had long enjoyed their fame as "frontier" celebrities and performers of the Old West. The book was reprinted in 1965 and again, in 1986, by Milton O. Smith and other descendants of Clint Smith. Beyond the tale of their captivity and reacculturation, both brothers led interesting lives as trail drivers, cowboys, and ranchers. Clint, who was born on August 3, 1860, married Dixie Alamo Dyche and fathered four sons and four daughters. A member of the Old Time Trail Drivers' Association, he died on September 10, 1932, and was buried in the Rocksprings, Texas, cemetery. Jeff, handy with the fiddle and also an Old Time Trail Driver, was born on March 31, 1862, and married Julia Harriet Reed from Bandera County. They had five sons and one daughter. He died on April 21, 1940, and was buried in the Coker Methodist Cemetery in northwest San Antonio. A state historical marker was placed on Jeff's grave in 1994.

-That will give you some idea of what this book contains. I would not call the adventures recounted in this book "predictable" - "ridiculously fascinating and entertaining" is more like it....more

The epilogue is unfortunate. It's like something Borges would write - on a day he dMy favorite of McCarthy's books, I have yet to read 'The Crossing'.

The epilogue is unfortunate. It's like something Borges would write - on a day he drank too many cups of yerba mate and was feeling impatient and confused. At least the pimp in this book has a philosophy that is well-organized and articulated. But Billy ending up under an interstate bridge in Arizona felt right, as well as sad.

The rest is fantastic, if you love old codgers telling violent, hilarious tales. The jackrabbits story resonated strongly with me, driving in southern New Mexico in the middle of the night still summons a great many sacrificial jackrabbits, but you will take greater care not to hit them if you are not driving a Buick like the characters herein (some of the jacks are seemingly as large as great danes). Of course, what makes the jackrabbit scene funny is not their demise, but as bizarre impetus for a gas station fight.

John Grady can be annoying as this Lancelot/Dalton character, but he is tempered with the pragmatic jibes of Billy in this volume.

Yes, the girl the boy falls in love with is once again doomed, a permanent victim, one of only three female characters in the book, lacks personality, but at least she's not described "the very witch of fuck", and her backstory is a little complicated (progress for a female in a McCarthy story). But the characters in this book are more fascinated by horses than women, and it is actually interesting....more

This is one of the few books that benefits from having the internet nearby as a distraction. I kept stopping to look up the different personalities inThis is one of the few books that benefits from having the internet nearby as a distraction. I kept stopping to look up the different personalities involved, photos of documents, images of the locations, and footage of the events that inspired this novel.

I doubt there is any single book on the Kennedy assassination that is better than this one, fiction or non-fiction. Each and every page is just so exciting. I'm certainly going to read more DeLillo....more

If you are a fan of 'Blood Meridian' this is a must-read. It's basically the recipe for McCarthy's book, characters and events separated and traced baIf you are a fan of 'Blood Meridian' this is a must-read. It's basically the recipe for McCarthy's book, characters and events separated and traced back through books and history.

It's one of those wonderful books that dramatically increases your reading list.

For example, one of the main inspirations for 'Blood Meridian' seems to be a confession written by one Samuel Chamberlain, who rode with Glanton's gang and survived the Yuma ferry massacre, a source which is the only historical reference to the terrifying Judge Holden. What Chamberlain has to say about Holden is eery. At one point Chamberlain scoffs at Holden's queer ideas about time and geology, composed of millions of years and a departure from the rest of the gang's 19th century notions of time. Chamberlain describes him as a renaissance man, as able with languages and music and as violent and perverse as McCarthy's character. Holden later steals Chamberlain's horse and threatens that they will all hang before disappearing into history.

Even the meteorite anvil that the Judge lifts over his head is a real artifact present in Arizona in two travel narratives noted here.

These are just a few examples, every important aspect of the book is referenced with past documents.

You also get listings and translations of all the non-English portions of the novel, with annotations on obscure words.

As well as mapping of the character's travels.

And themed concordances.

A whole essay on the Judge's recipe for gunpowder!

The author's postulating on McCarthy's use of Tarot symbolism might overreach, but his points are well-researched if not completely convincing.

I enjoyed reading this book more than 'Blood Meridian', but it has convinced me to reread the novel, since it does such a wonderful job of putting McCarthy's book in historical perspective, and demonstrating the patience and care he took in writing it....more

I have to admire Katherine Ann Porter. So many of her loves died and rejected her, ran away, and deceived her. Somehow she ended up writing truthfullyI have to admire Katherine Ann Porter. So many of her loves died and rejected her, ran away, and deceived her. Somehow she ended up writing truthfully about it. At least I believe her. Her stories do not seem like acts of judgment, since the lovers' sins are not forgiven or changed. Yes, I believe her, because her final relief was to understand it all in a story. What relief? It is only the comfort and joy between reader and author. If I could step back somewhere and propose to Katherine and win her heart we would certainly repeat some of these ugly acts. No solution for love in the stories of Katherine Ann Porter, just the comfort and joy between author and reader.

"He wondered if anybody had ever thought - oh, well, of course everybody else had, he was always making marvelous discoveries that other people had known all along - how impossible it is to explain or to make other eyes see the special qualities in the person you love. There was such a special kind of beauty in Miriam. In certain lights and moods he simply got a clutch in the pit of his stomach when he looked at her. It was something that could happen at any hour of the day, in the midst of the most ordinary occupations. He thought there was something to be said for living with one person day and night the year round. It brings out the worst, but it brings out the best, too, and Miriam's best was pretty damn swell. He couldn't describe it. It was easy to talk about her faults. He remembered all of them, he could add them up against her like rows of figures in a vast unpaid debt. He had lived with her for four years, and even now sometimes he woke out of a sound sleep in a sweating rage with himself, asking himself again why he had ever wasted a minute on her." -That Tree

"Oh, what is life, she asked herself in desperatete seriousness, in those childish unanswerable words, and what shall I do with it? It is something of my own, she thought in a fury of jealous possessiveness, what shall I make of it? She did not know that she asked herself this because all her earliest training had argued that life was a substance, a material to be used, it took shape and direction and meaning only as the possessor guided and worked it; living was a progress of continuous and varied acts of the will directed towards a definite end. She had been assured that there were good and evil ends, one must make a choice. But what was good, and what was evil? I hate love, she thought, as if this were the answer, I hate love and being loved, I hate it. And her disturbed and seething mind received a shock of comfort from this sudden collaps of an old painful structure of distorted images and misconceptions." -Noon Wine

Not all of Porter is bombastic revelations on the nature of love. Some of these passages struck me because they came after walking close with some character, knowing them closer than a sister or a brother, and then hearing them decide on something that they had never thought to decide before - it is a joy and comfort.

I first heard of Katherine because she was an astonishing and lucky survivor of the 1918 influenza epidemic. She lived, and when her hair grew back it was all white. The young man that briefly took care of her when she was first struck with the sickness was not alive when she came out of it. Writing about it in 'Pale Horse, Pale Rider' and 'Holiday' is a stunning response to such agony, it doesn't matter if it took decades. I stand up and cheer her.

Here is this:

"He was wearing a new hat of a pretty biscuit shade, for it never occurred to him to buy anything of a practical color; he had put it on for the first time and the rain was spoiling it. She kept thinking, 'But this is dreadful, where will he get another?' She compared it with Eddie's hats that always seemed to be precisely seven years old and as if they had been quite purposely left out in the rain, and yet they sat with a careless and incidental rightness on Eddie. But Camilo was far different; if he wore a shabby hat it would be merely shabby on him, and he would lose his spirits over it. If she had not feared Camilo would take it badly, for he insisted on the little ceremonies up to the point he had fixed for them, she would have said to them as they left Thora's house, 'Do go home. I can surely reach the station by myself.' 'It is written that we must be rained upon tonight,' said Camilo, 'so let it be together.'" -Theft

Wonderful. I'm so glad to have finally met her, born only ten miles away in the town of Kyle, Texas....more

I keep buying used books originating from the shelves of someone, someone who writes grammatical corrections in BLUE INK, even when it is OBVIOUS theI keep buying used books originating from the shelves of someone, someone who writes grammatical corrections in BLUE INK, even when it is OBVIOUS the novel is written in a certain idiom, in this case that of a SIXTEEN YEAR OLD IN WEST TEXAS. And even moral indictments written beside circled portions of text? What compels people to do such things? Do they achieve some satisfaction from pointing to the words of a widely published book, and saying "WRONG" "SINFUL" "EVIL"? What a miserable, contrary person, I'd like to meet them, we'd make an interesting pair....more

Hardin took himself very seriously. This is a very dry recitation of murders and roamings. It may be silly to expect humor or insight in an outlaw's aHardin took himself very seriously. This is a very dry recitation of murders and roamings. It may be silly to expect humor or insight in an outlaw's autobiography, colorful movie murderers have skewed expectations I guess. This book is terribly boring. If you are curious about the period and the region there is little departure from the hackwork of fictional nickel westerns of the time.

Hardin was given a pardon from Governor Hogg for all of his killings.

Recently, in my hometown, noted country musician Billy Joe Shaver was acquitted of charges involving his shooting a man in the face outside of a bar. He was not licensed to carry the firearm. The man he shot survived. I don't know why I mention it. It seems to relate to this somehow....more

I do enjoy McCarthy's scrawny troublemakers. Pathetic souls who are more dangerous and sympathetic than they first seem.

A lot of adventure.

Wonderful pI do enjoy McCarthy's scrawny troublemakers. Pathetic souls who are more dangerous and sympathetic than they first seem.

A lot of adventure.

Wonderful pastoral detail.

His most romantic book. It's a little disturbing what McCarthy considers romance (a prolonged relationship between a man and a woman in one of his books would be surprising) the women are always very beautiful, and always suddenly die or disappear after the hero beds them down real hard a few times. But this is a Western, so it makes sense here.

Pleasantly surprised to read so much Spanish dialogue.

As always, perfect, funny, and threatening dialogue from assorted simplefolks and elaborate tricksters.

The polysyndetic Faulkner imitations and laborous metaphors I always cringe at. Well, sometimes I enjoy them. He has something in here about horses marveling at the sound of human vomiting which is pretty funny. But it's just not my favorite McCarthy trait.

I can't say I particularly enjoyed watching Thompson usher this character into complete oblivion. The final judgment made on the protagonist of this bI can't say I particularly enjoyed watching Thompson usher this character into complete oblivion. The final judgment made on the protagonist of this book is made with such masochistic fervor, it makes one's stomach turn - Fascinating and upsetting, considering Thompson must've identified with this character at least a little, since it was informed by his experience as a night bellboy in a Fort Worth hotel.

Every authority and every relative and every colleague of the bellboy in this book thrives on suspicion and hatred. The bellboy's mother is dead, the bellboy gives nearly all of his earnings to a semi-invalid father. Every time the family doctor visits he unleashes seething condemnation on the bellboy, for the father needs a shave! His clothes look unkempt! A lawyer hounds the bellboy for legal expenses his father has gathered. The bellboy's coworker berates him constantly. We are meant to feel sorry for the bellboy, of course he does not deserve such treatment. As a reader I resent being manipulated so clearly. Thompson almost pulls it off, he almost provides believable motivation for all the sadism, but it goes off the rails too soon.

Then there are the women. The swell-looking babe. If manipulative, incestuous head-games turn you on, than this is the book for you! (A real class dame right? What could a guy like me? Huh? Choking on resentment her curves want to make me explode in a rage! Snarling authority, always trying to maintain my authority, but then collapsing at her breast and weeping.) Some of these men and women from these 1950s books, every second of affection they receive comes at the price of such pain and guilt! A kiss is your ticket to hell! It's horrifying. It's very hard for me to read.

Also, these characters don't drink water or breathe air, they guzzle coffee and inhale cigarette smoke, despite constant references to the heat wave and sweating! Just funny to note.

In spite of the agony this book documents, I found it fascinating....more

It always pleases me to read McCarthy's meticulous descriptions of guns. In a more modern setting, this includes a lot of information. It reminds me oIt always pleases me to read McCarthy's meticulous descriptions of guns. In a more modern setting, this includes a lot of information. It reminds me of my father, because he has always complained about authors getting certain information about guns wrong. It can ruin a book for him. He finds Stephen King especially guilty of this sin. Of course, that hack doesn't have time to fact check when he is excreting 100 pages a day. For someone like me, only knowing very basic info about firearms, I don't always know what certain guns can and can not do, but there are people out there who are very into this stuff, and if you are going to write a book with a lot of gun violence, it is sort of your responsibility to know what you are talking about.

Anyway, I found the italicized thoughts of Sheriff Ed Tom Bell to be captivating. Writing wise country bumpkin is hard to pull off. Most people make them too innocent or too damn goofy. I don't know if Bell's outlook on things is similar to McCarthy's, I happen to disagree with him on the drug situation. It's a complete farce. The day the Border Patrol or any American law enforcement ends drug trafficking will be the day that the world is out of drugs.